your arms around me
by unravel
Summary: Song fic, future Quinn/Puck, one shot; Quinn reflects on how her life is now that she's married Puck.


**Author's Note:** This is a song fic set to Your Arms Around Me by Jens Lekman. You can listen to the song here: .com/watch?v=-nlC3ioS5h8, and I suggest that you do. Enjoy!

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We live a life where everything is too small. The house is too small, his paycheck is too small, our family is too small… I get blamed a lot. The reason our family is too small is because of me, I gave up the only daughter we've been able to have and I thought no amount of trying was going to be able to fix it. The paycheck is too small because of me, I spend it. I spend it on art supplies, canvasses, oil paints, brushes, anything they stock at the pathetic art supply store in the basement of the building that houses the headquarters for Lima's chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Once, as I was parking our piece of shit Volvo in the parking lot to go buy new supplies, I see my mom walking into the main building. She didn't see me, just went on chatting with her friends. Now I wonder if she would've even recognized me. My hair is so long and I'm sure I look thinner than I've ever looked. I don't eat much. I sleep at weird hours when he isn't home and sometimes we'll be eating dinner and I'll realize this is the only meal I've eaten all day and I don't know how it happened. I ducked quickly into the basement shop before she could see me.

At first, I thought I had the flu. Puck yelled at me for waking him up every morning for a week by crawling over him to race to the bathroom and kneel in front of the toilet and puke my guts out. He groaned, pulled the pillow over his head, and rolled over, going back to sleep without a second thought. Lovely. It doesn't matter if your wife is a few steps away, throwing up for some unknown reason. You can't be bothered to even get her a glass of water. I fall back on the tile of the bathroom floor, wiping the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand as I look over at him strewn across the bed we share and I wonder how on earth I got here. To this tiny little house on the outskirts on the town we grew up in, married to a man who makes me feel like I'm still sixteen every day of my life, in the best and worst ways possible. Married to a man who only signed the certificate because I said I truly believed he would never do it.

I go to the free clinic because Puck doesn't get health insurance from the mechanic shop. When they call me, they use my full name and I wince when I hear it because it still sounds weird. "Quinn Puckerman?" I stand quickly and follow the nurse back into the doctor's office. I explain the problem. She explains an easy answer which I counter-explain is highly improbable. My sister took me to a doctor who assured me it was highly improbable. The doctor in front of me cocks an eyebrow and says "Well, let's just run some tests and we'll see." I brush this away. Highly improbable.

Above our sink is a window where I can look into the mediocre backyard when I'm washing dishes after we've eaten dinner and Puck's telling me some lie about where he's going now. But right now, its morning and he's promised to take me to the lake today. I got up early to walk next door and beg the Patersons, the old couple that are our neighbors, for an avocado from the sad little thirsty garden in their backyard.

"Of course, honey. You take as many as you want." I thank her quickly and do just that, carrying a few in my arms as I start walking back towards my own yard. Mrs. Paterson calls out to me. "You know, when I was pregnant with my girl Katie, I ate three avocados a day!" I glance over my shoulder at her, smiling weakly. But I don't say anything before I walk back inside.

It's August in Ohio and outside it's hot. Our air conditioning is struggling to keep up with how hot the day is going to be and as I stand over the sink, I can feel myself sweating, beads of moisture forming at my hairline and the nape of my neck and in my cleavage. I'm not even wearing a bra under Puck's Guns N' Roses t-shirt and the fabric sticks to my back uncomfortably. I cut into the first avocado, slicing the knife around the peel until it hits the pit, circling the blade around the hard center until it falls into two halves in my palms. I set one half aside purposefully, pulling the hard stone pit from the half in my hand and letting it drop with a thud into the metal sink. I eat slowly, cutting the half into little slivers, pulling the thick black skin away from the fatty green meat before I pop the sliver into my mouth, chewing slowly as I look out the window.

Almost every day, he does something in an attempt to make me feel guilty for giving us this life. He talks as if I could've done everything by agreeing to keep her, like we would've somehow been happier and better off with her in our lives. Like she's some kind of life changing angel that would've made everything okay. I tell him he's fooling himself. She would've been miserable. We scream and we fight and we throw and break things. I am the correct one in this situation. I did the right thing in the end. But my arguments don't faze him. In fact, I'm fairly sure he doesn't even hear me the majority of the time. He doesn't want to. And heaven forbid he do anything he doesn't want to do.

I start on the second half of the avocado, taking my time as I keep my eyes out the window where it's morning in Lima. I swallow the piece I'm eating and press the knife down into the fruit when his arms slide around my waist. I jump, startled, and the knife pushes down effortlessly into the palm of my hand. "Shit." My voice is small and under my breath and the pain causes me to curse. He doesn't move though. His chin jabs into my shoulder. I look down at my hand as the avocado half falls into the sink. My other hand drops the knife with a clatter. I sense that we're both frozen, staring down at the thick line of blood that's sprouted across the middle of my palm. A few drops of red splatter against the cold metal of the sink. His breath is hot in my ear.

"Oops." He's wrapping a hand towel around it, not moving from his position behind me. I can feel the avocado that's covering my hands push into the cut and the oily fruit stings. I suck in a breath tensely. He kisses my neck. "Now, why did you do that, Quinn?" I let my eyes close.

"You put your arms around me…" When he speaks, it's a mutter into my skin and it vibrates and makes me shiver.

"Mmhmm. You're my wife." He says the word and it still sounds weird coming out of his mouth, foreign and clumsy. He never in his life thought about saying that. That's why it sounds so weird. His fingers dip under the hem of the t-shirt I'm wearing and run over my stomach roughly. I press the hand towel to the cut as my eyes close, my hips jutting painful into the sharp edge of the counter. His hands cup my bare breasts for a moment before he's spinning me around and his full lips press against mine. He's everywhere all at once, his hands grabbing me by the thighs and lifting me to the edge of the sink, fingers tugging down the flimsy cotton shorts I'm wearing and my panties all at once. When I reach up to put a hand on his chest, steadying myself, the hand towel is gone and my hand leaves a thick red line of blood along his wife beater. I stare at the red against the cloth and vaguely I hear the sounds of Puck unbuttoning his jeans and pushing them to the floor before his hands are on my thighs again. He's pulling me towards him and without thinking I slide my hand up his chest and around his neck and a trail of blood follows my hand. I don't think he notices. Puck grunts and he's pushing into me and I let out a moan, my other hand going to the back of his head. There's still avocado on my fingers.

He thrusts into me with an urgency that only Puck has. An urgency that feels like he wants to make me come like he knows he can, but also like he's being greedy. He's taking it all for himself and not sharing with anyone else. Sometimes I feel like he's not even sharing it with me. I moan with each of his grunts. We're loud because we can be. We're alone in this tiny house. He calls my name and I call his right back and his grip on my thighs tightens in response. He's done countless inappropriate things to get me to say his name like that. My stomach muscles tighten and I open my eyes to tell him I'm close but he's looking back at me like he knows. He may not know a lot about me when it comes to normal things, but Puck can fuck me like it's his job. He told me so himself. I keep my eyes on his, struggling against the urge to let my eyes roll back in my head. Puck looks back at me, his eyes hooded and I know he's close too. I come, shuddering against him and he groans in my ear and I feel him come inside me and the world is quiet for a moment. We're trying to catch our breath and suddenly I realize he's covered in blood and I look at the palm of my hand again and I feel dizzy.

"Babe?" He's cupping my face in his hands but suddenly the world is narrowing down to a pinpoint and it's like we're underwater and he's very far away. I still feel his hands on my face though and his fingernails are digging into my cheeks as I collapse against him. "Baby? Quinn!" I remember him wrapping his arms around me before I pass out.

I dream about kangaroos and when I wake up it's very bright and I'm disoriented and I have to figure out which way is up for a moment. I look down at my hand and it's wrapped in toilet paper. In a fog, I grin and I probably look weird. But he's wrapped my hand in toilet paper and that makes me smile. After a while I realize my head is in his lap and I'm lying very awkwardly on a small plastic bench and we're in the ER. He's reading the newspaper as if we're sitting in the park and my hand isn't bloody and cut up and I haven't just woken up. I stare up at him for a long time, my hand throbbing dully against my stomach. He hasn't changed his shirt, so he's just as bloody as I am. We look a mess. I look down at the hand on my stomach. Highly improbable. And yet…

I take one of his hands from the newspaper and put it around me. He notices I'm awake for the first time since we've been sitting here and looks down at me, raising his eyebrows. I look back at him and we sit like that for a long moment before I hear the nurse call my name and for the first time I don't flinch when I hear it. "Quinn Puckerman?"


End file.
